August 2021 In Books: What I'm Reading

Earlier this month I finished Jutta Person's Esel, a thin German-language volume of cultural history about donkeys and anthropomorphic interpretations of them by everyone from Roman satirists through Christian theologians to German romantics. My uncle M. gave it to me as a birthday present last year because donkeys are my favourite animals. Now another birthday gift, Paul Auster's 4321, is lined up to read next.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, and Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi's The Death of Vivek Oji, are also read, and although both were undoubtedly good, I won't write reviews at present because they'd be too half-baked.

Cover of A Hundred Million Years and a Day
via Gallic Books/Belgravia Books

In a big geographical leap, I've moved to reading A Hundred Million Years and a Day, a French hit novel that is set at various times in the first half of the 20th century, It is written from the perspective of a solitary, dry-souled ivory tower paleontologist — written by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and translated sublimely and award-winningly by Sam Taylor. Perhaps because my French literary frame of reference is small, the atmosphere and the setting remind me of Marcel Pagnol and the spare style reminds me of Le grand Meaulnes. It's also well thought out; sometimes time-hopping in books is so tediously confusing that I want to gouge out my eyes, but here the back and forth — as the details are filled in — adds genuine suspense.

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The book I'm most enthusiastic right now because it makes me happy is Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer's Journey by Bob Avian and Tom Santopietro. A basic knowledge of musicals or of mid-20th century film is enough to make its revelations understandable.

The aim of the authors is to tell us exactly what we want to know: each chapter is grouped quite tightly around a specific musical. Fortunately the gossip is generous and not mean-spirited. We hear that Jerome Robbins, a god of sorts among choreographers, was tremendously unpleasant; but we are also told that this was because he was unhappy.

In general Avian (from whose perspective the book is written) and Santopietro express modern views. Avian, in his eighties, makes little attempt to present a great man's (or woman's) sadism as ideal or even as a useful evil. He presents it as a flaw, but as a flaw whose owner still deserves sympathy.

I love the old-fashioned turns of phrase in the book, too, however: 'great gal', or "[... q]uicker than you can say “West Side Story,” Audrey set her cap for Michael and snagged him."

It feels twee or reductive to call Avian delightful, but the adjective comes to mind anyway.

The authors are friendly raconteurs, as we see not just there, but also when they wink at the audience with sentences like this vignette from an unsuccessful play production:

Act Two contained a King Lear ballet—yes, you read that right—and I was completely at sea.

Avian also mentions his experience of 1960s drug culture in a characteristically wholesome way:

I tried pot for the first time and thought, “Hmm, this sure is a lot of fun. And creative.”

He died in January this year, as I was startled to learn when reading his Wikipedia biography.

Readers who want memoirists to disembowel their private lives might find this book not for them, but fans of Broadway, or of 20th century American film star history, and perhaps also fans of New York City's social history in general, will probably love this. National Public Radio included it in their list of the best books of 2020.

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"Tony award-winning Broadway choreographer Bob Avian dies aged 83" by Adrian Horton (January 22, 2021) [Guardian]

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As part of my research into the history of the earliest decades of the 20th century, I have also jumped into the World War I chapters of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell's Autobiography. Published well after that War, when the Cold War was still on, it is like the oak in Jean de la Fontaine's fable — not in that its roots touch on the realm of the dead, but rather that its roots touch on the realm of Victoria and an era of absolute British aristocratic privilege that seems utterly absurd now.

I first read the autobiography when I was a teenager struggling with my own opposition to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He was briefly an imaginary posthumous mentor.

And now — even as I wince at his views on relationships during the passages about Lady Constance Malleson, Katherine Mansfield and Lady Ottoline Morrell; even as I find him overprivileged in one passage, and mindbogglingly out of touch in another; and even though I don't admire his catty moments — in general it feels like his intelligence, his wonderful turns of phrase, and his dedication are not in doubt. And his insights on political and social celebrities are also great, if partial, gossip.

Cover of Why Men Fight (1917)
via Wikimedia Commons

Here is a passage where he has been imprisoned due to his activism against the First World War, in a rather posh prison division thanks to the intervention of former British prime minister Arthur Balfour:

I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. [...] I wrote a book, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy [...] and began the work for Analysis of Mind. I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence, as was shown by their having been caught.

(Russell, Bertrand. Autobiography. London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1978. p. 256)

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I'm also reading Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker, about a large midcentury American family that included a high number of sons with schizophrenia. I am struggling with it. As a takedown of the conformist 1950s ideal of domestic bliss, or of the unalloyed joys of military service and being in a military family, I think Hidden Valley Road is the most effective.

I would like it better if the family could have written their own history. It's not much fun of reading their lives as a psychological literature exercise. From my amateur armchair perspective, I like it better when we acknowledge that we can follow some of the thought patterns of the more conspicuously mentally ill, for example.

I've known people who are genuinely healthy in mind, like the psychological equivalent of an amazingly athletic person. In most cases I would say, however, that we are participants in, and not observers of, the human battle for logic, reason and proportionate emotional reactions. If we don't acknowledge that, it's unhealthy for ourselves and harmful to others.

The Orderly God in Leibniz's Vision

Discourse on Metaphysics
by Gottfried Leibniz, translated by George Redington Montgomery
Discours de métaphysique (1686) GP iv 427-463
via Wikisource

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote this treatise in 1686 during a letter exchange with a French fellow philosopher, Antoine Arnauld. It wasn't published until over a century later. So I surmise it didn't play a role in founding Leibniz's reputation as a philosopher who rather heartlessly argued that the world is perfection and that, by implication, anyone who suffers or rebels against it is too thick to understand God's machinery. Leibniz was 40 at the time of writing; his influential work Monadologie was produced about 30 years later, and Candide, Voltaire's riposte, was published in 1759.

Turning to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, I see that Leibniz's chapter begins on a firm note: firstly, the German philosopher was apparently "not admirable" as a person. Also, part of Leibniz's work was meant to appeal to his royal patrons and not to 'rock the boat,' which mined its worth from a philosophical point of view.

It was the popular Leibniz who invented the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds

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Here Leibniz sets out his Logical God, and a Connect The Dot metaphor:

VI. That God does nothing which is not orderly, and that it is not even possible to conceive of events which are not regular.The activities or the acts of will of God are commonly divided into ordinary and extraordinary. But it is well to bear in mind that God does nothing out of order. Therefore, that which passes for extraordinary is so only with regard to a particular order established among the created things, for as regards the universal order, everything conforms to it. This is so true that not only does nothing occur in this world which is absolutely irregular, but it is even impossible to conceive of such an occurrence. Because, let us suppose for example that some one jots down a quantity of points upon a sheet of paper helter skelter, as do those who exercise the ridiculous art of Geomancy; now I say that it is possible to find a geometrical line whose concept shall be uniform and constant, that is, in accordance with a certain formula, and which line at the same time shall pass through all of those points, and in the same order in which the hand jotted them down; also if a continuous line be traced, which is now straight, now circular, and now of any other description, it is possible to find a mental equivalent, a formula or an equation common to all the points of this line by virtue of which formula the changes in the direction of the line must occur. There is no instance of a face whose contour does not form part of a geometric line and which can not be traced entire by a certain mathematical motion. But when the formula is very complex, that which conforms to it passes for irregular. Thus we may  say that in whatever manner God might have created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena, as might be the case with a geometric line, whose construction was easy, but whose properties and effects were extremely remarkable and of great significance.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, c. 1700
Portrait by Johann Friedrich Wentzel (1670–1729)
via Wikimedia Commons

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Russell argues against using God as a logical solution to philosophical problems.

The God of the Old Testament is a God of power, the God of the New Testament is also a God of love; but the God of the theologians, from Aristotle to Calvin, is one whose appeal is intellectual: His existence solves certain puzzles which otherwise would create argumentative difficulties in the understanding of the universe. This Deity who appears at the end of a piece of reasoning, like the proof of a proposition in geometry, did not satisfy Rousseau, who reverted to a conception of God more akin to that of the Gospels.

Leibniz, I gather, runs the risk of not loving his fellow man enough to consider God's purpose in light of man's welfare, and of seeing God in the bloodless way Russell describes.

Furthermore, the British philosopher counters the 'best of all worlds' argument as efficiently as Voltaire. First he recapitulates the Leibnizian reasoning: God made a world that has evil too, rather than all good, he writes; and

That is because some great goods are logically bound up with certain evils.

He further explains Leibniz's point with this example: a drink of water would not be appreciated as a great good if one were not thirsty.

In short:

The world that resulted [from God's decision] [...] has a greater surplus of good over evil than any other possible world; it is therefore the best of all possible worlds, and the evil that it contains affords no argument against the goodness of God.

But Russell then argues that this line of reasoning is self-interested. It might appeal to Leibniz himself and to Leibniz's patrons, but not to much of the rest of the world:

This argument apparently satisfied the Queen of Prussia. Her serfs continued to suffer the evil, while she continued to enjoy the good,* and it was comforting to be assured by a great philosopher that this was just and right.

My father and I once talked about a different metaphor for an organized/disorganized world: If we inspect a carpet from beneath, as human beings do when we look at the world, we see the frayed ends of yarn, the unfinished appearance, etc. Whereas a being who is looking at the carpet from the top, like God, is seeing and understanding the pattern. Not that I remember Papa presenting this belief as his own; he was discussing it as an illustration.

I like the Connect the Dot metaphor, too. But I think I'd substitute the modern metaphor of 'not seeing the forest for the trees.' When the world is composed of many elements, it can be hard to see patterns and organization that may exist.

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"Bertrand Russell Smoking A Pipe"
"The Welsh philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell smoking the pipe while sitting on an armchair. 1954 (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)"
via Wikimedia Commons

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My two cents: I'm not entirely opposed to the idea that "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter" — that it is possible to believe in a God whose reasoning is not always understandable but might be explained to us in the afterlife. That said, I object very much to human beings explaining away the hardships of others, by attempting to intuit God's reasoning themselves. I think that it's nicer to have the sense to see that this is a tricky endeavour, and have the compassion to see that it should not be undertaken if it makes people feel even worse.**

Sources:
"Discourse on Metaphysics" [Wikipedia]
"Monadology" [Wikipedia]
"Leibniz" in The History of Western Philosophy, 2nd ed., by Bertrand Russell (London: George Allen + Unwin, 1979), pp. 563-576
John 13.7, King James Bible [Kingjamesbibleonline.org]

* (His premise that Queen of Prussia was happier than her subjects because she was richer is not watertight. But I agree that the world might make far greater sense to her, because it feels materially fulfilling, than it would to a peasant to whom it feels materially precarious.)
** I should state that I am not thinking of specific examples of this behaviour! — this is not a passive-aggressive allusion or 'subtweet.'

The Friday Miscellany: The Dis-Consolations of Philosophy

Books currently lying at the head of my bed, from easiest to hardest to finish for me.

Towers in the Mist, Elizabeth Goudge
First Published: 1938

A historical novel set in the time of Elizabeth I. If it's at all like the author's other books, it will delve into religion and superstition, the hidden depths of the human character, and the beauties and past of the English landscape. I think that "mysticism" is a fitting term for her worldview. What is fascinating in her modern novels, for instance the children's book Linnets and Valerians, is that they depict the twilight of the old British rural microcosm before the onset of American-style modernity. Her great flaws are that she is prone to kitsch and unremitting in her endeavour to "[find] tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing." Aside from that, she is an astoundingly good writer. I've reached Chapter 2.

Elizabeth-Goudge.com (Biography, list of works)
"Poetry, childhood, memory" (Blog entry on Elizabeth Goudge's writing)

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Micromégas, Voltaire
First Published: 1752

[The following is written in French because I want to use the language more often; hopefully this will not bother anyone. Apologies in advance for grammatical and other errors.]
Une courte histoire philosophique qui raconte, j'imagine, la vie d'un géant qui habite une planète de l'étoile Sirius. Le serviable Voltaire, dans une succession de paragraphes qui fourmille de chiffres et de précisions autant que cet oeuvre de Jules Verne qui s'appelle De la terre à la lune (un livre que j'ai lu fidèlement jusqu'à la fin — malgré le fait que ni les obus, ni les clubs scientifiques qui ne sont que de pompeux assemblés d'hommes qui n'ont rien de mieux à faire, m'intéressent beaucoup — mais qui m'a trahi en me laissant confuse et énervée par cette fin qui n'est pas une fin du tout), nous dit qu'il a huit lieues de longueur. Je souhaite passer plein d'heures heureuses en restant assidûment ignorante des implications philosophiques, et en me réjouissant au lieu de cela de l'imagination fort vive de Voltaire, au niveau le moins intellectuel que possible. À ce moment, je suis à la deuxième page (formidable, n'est-ce pas?).

Micromégas (Liens aux textes électroniques du livre)
Voltaire (Biography and list of works)
Voltaire's Page (Link to biographies, works, etc.)

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Haydn, Rosemary Hughes
First Published: 1950

A biography of the composer, which begins at the beginning — in the true "I was born of poor but honest parents . . ." vein — and properly trots through, as far as I can tell, to the end. It is accessibly written, well researched, and academic; and, as in duty bound for the sake of the reader, the author gently attempts to put herself in the shoes of Haydn, infuse humour and sympathy, and depict the ambient time and place. My quibble with this approach is that it is fairly unoriginal and too careful. What I particularly like about our copy, a nice beige clothbound edition, is the very brief notes and underlinings that my great-aunt pencilled in. I'm on the third chapter.

JSTOR: Haydn (First page of a review in the journal Music & Letters, 1950)

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Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Dava Sobel
First Published: 1995

A pleasantly written and detailed account of the search for a trustworthy way of determining one's location at sea, which consumed the attention of the eighteenth-century scientific establishment and the monarchs who patronized it, until the clockmaker John Harrison finally achieved it by inventing a reliable chronometer. (The required mathematical feats much resemble the ones that Cyrus Harding performs to find the latitude and longitude of Verne's Mysterious Island.) It's also a commentary on the intriguing and fanciful dead ends that scientific research pursues before a lone and embattled figure discovers a way out of the labyrinth. Among the anecdotes, the tale of Sir Clowdisley (I'd always seen it as Cloudsley) Shovell, the admiral whose fleet was wrecked and whose men were worse than decimated on the Scilly Islands in 1707, is in my view scarcely inferior to that of Coriolanus or any other Shakespearean tragic hero. Lastly and incidentally, Dava Sobel's style, and my quibbles regarding it, resembles that of Rosemary Hughes.

Dava Sobel (Website of the author)
"The Longitude Problem" (Author's article on same subject)
NYT Books: Longitude (Review, viz. synopsis)

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Philosophie der Geschichte, G.W.F. Hegel
First Published: 1837

Hegel is, I've found, a forgiving philosopher. He has been my bedtime reading for a while, not because he is easier to read than other authors, but because in a drowsy state I am often more focused and less likely to (metaphorically speaking) chuck away a book in exasperation and do something fun instead. By this means I read all of Shakespeare's plays, except for King John, by the age of eighteen (but I still have no idea what Henry IV is about).

So the first six pages of Hegel's introduction to Philosophie der Geschichte went swimmingly, but then I recognized that it was gibberish to me after all. Now I'm on the eighth page. It's true that the structure of the introduction is clear enough; he classifies the ways one can write a historical work — reporting events, philosophizing about the events, presenting the events in the context of a country or a theme, etc. But this classification is not very helpful, except in making one think (about the purpose of historiography, I suppose), because it is imposed on reality, not integral to it; other people find other categories far more useful, and I don't know if Hegel's are authoritative.

In his History of Western Philosophy, it is evident that Bertrand Russell doesn't have much use for Hegel. (One problem is, I think, that Russell succumbs to the fallacy of blaming everyone from Plato to — well, Hegel, for the 20th-century rise of fascism. Not blaming, exactly, but interpreting their ideas as proto-fascism.) As far as the Philosophie der Geschichte is concerned, he begins by explaining that Hegel divides German history as falling into three periods, where Charlemagne and the Reformation are the watershed events. Then Hegel names these periods the Kingdoms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Russell's comment, admittedly with reason, is this:

It seems a little odd that the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost should have begun with the bloody and utterly abominable atrocities committed in suppressing the Peasants' War, but Hegel, naturally, does not mention so trivial an accident. Instead, he goes off, as might be expected, into praises of Machiavelli.

Quotation from History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell (London: Unwin, 1984), p.708